THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE

I have been writing about the Other texts that shaped Christian thought through the long Middle Ages, all the alternative gospels and apocryphal texts that literate people read with almost the same veneration that they paid to the canonical scriptures. One problem with finding such materials is that we often don’t know exactly the point of time at which they were used. In Armenia, for instance, a host of apocryphal texts survived, but in fairly late copies – sixteenth century or afterwards. It’s a reasonable assumption that these were read much earlier, but we can’t be entirely sure.

In one case though, historical circumstances give us an accurate terminus date, so that we have a true cross-section of what the church was reading at a particular time. The resulting picture of that one particular Christian culture is amazing in its breadth and, frankly, its oddity. It also raises important questions about exactly how the limits of the Bible were defined during long stretches of Christian history.

Anglo-Saxon England was converted in the century or so after 597, and in the following centuries became one of the liveliest cultural centers of Western Europe. Scandinavian invasions caused massive damage in the ninth century, but Anglo-Saxon culture and literature continued to flourish until the Norman Conquest of 1066. Within a couple of generations after that cataclysm, the Anglo-Saxon language ceased to matter as a learned tongue. When we find a text associated with the Anglo-Saxon church, then, we can say confidently that it was used somewhere between 600 and 1066 or so, and is very unlikely to be much earlier or later.

A century ago, M. R. James remarked that “the Anglo-Saxon and Irish scholars seem to have been in possession of a good deal of rather rare apocryphal literature,” mainly in Latin but occasionally even in Greek. The content of that library has attracted much scholarly interest in modern times, in books like Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England (2003), edited by Kathryn Powell and Donald Scragg, and Frederick M. Biggs’ Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: The Apocrypha (2007).

With that material in mind, what can we say about the English Christian bookshelf? It certainly included all the canonical books of the Bible, as well as such deuterocanonical works as Judith, Tobias, Wisdom, and Sirach. But English clergy also knew and read a sizable body of Old Testament pseudepigrapha, including 1 and 2 Enoch, Jubilees, the Assumption of Moses, as well as Psalm 151. They also used the bizarre Irish text De Plasmatione Adam, which was added to the older Life of Adam and Eve.

Among New Testament apocrypha, few doubted the authenticity of Paul’s Letter to the Laodiceans or the Gospel of Nicodemus, with its account of the harrowing of Hell. Apocryphal Lives of the Apostles were especially popular. Partly due to the English church’s curious connections with the East Mediterranean, the Syrian saint Thomas was a beloved figure. Hexham’s eighth century bishop Acca built up a very full and distinguished collection (amplissimam ac nobilissimam bibliothecam) of the lives and Passions of the apostles and martyrs, among many other ecclesiastical books.

Anything dealing with apocalyptic or the End Times commanded special interest, including the Apocalypses of Thomas and Peter, the Visio Pauli, and the Christian sections of the Sibylline Oracles (Versus Sibyllae de Iudicio). Also in circulation was Christ’s alleged correspondence with king Abgar of Edessa.

Devotion to the Virgin Mary meant that scriptures and pseudo-gospels concerning her life or career circulated widely (See Mary Clayton’s The Apocryphal Gospels of Mary in Anglo-Saxon England). Some texts described the Virgin’s birth and upbringing (the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the De Nativitate Mariae), others her Assumption and passing from this world (Transitus S. Mariae).

Quite apart from surviving manuscripts or contemporary references, we see the influence of these alternative scriptures in art and poetry. The Book of Cerne includes a fragment of an eighth century play based on the Harrowing of Hell, which is incidentally the oldest play written in England. The Book of Enoch is a prime source for the common theme of the Fall of the Angels.

Modern readers draw a strict line between canonical scripture and such lesser forms as apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, and hagiography. Such divisions would have been hard to explain in an era when, basically, books were books, and most of what was written was likely to be, of its nature, sacred. It’s useful here to look at neighboring Ireland, which had access to an even more spectacular range of apocryphal scriptures. David Dumville notes that in Old Irish, the word canóin (canon) “did not have the meaning of ‘established fixed Canon (of Scripture etc)’ but referred always to text as opposed to commentary. … there prevailed no clear and immediate mental distinction between canonical and uncanonical biblical texts.” Generally, that remark certainly applies to England.

However broad-minded in their attitude to canonicity, Anglo-Saxon readers were by no means uncritical in their acceptance of these other texts, which might serve to admit heretical teachings. Nor did they automatically assume that texts were in fact written by the authors whose names they bore. For one thing, clergy had access to ancient works that discussed these issues at length, especially Fathers like Jerome (although that did not help with texts written after his time). Bede, in the eighth century, acknowledged doubts about the authorship of some texts, but still advocated reading them. Enoch, for instance, was clearly suspicious, “but because that book which is presented under his name is considered not truly written by him, but edited by some other one under the title of his name.” Yet it still merited reading, especially because it was cited as scriptural in the New Testament epistle of Jude.

Other scholars were more dubious, and the eighth century scholar Aldhelm condemned the Visio Pauli, the Apocalypse of Paul. So did the later writer Aelfric, who would probably have supported a wholesale national purge of apocryphal manuscripts if that had been vaguely feasible. In fact, he consigned many to a damning category of lease gesetnysse, “false compositions.” Yet even Aelfric cited apocryphal accounts of the Virgin’s birth and parentage as authoritative. He also cited the fifteen letters of Paul, including Laodiceans. Lacking the resources of later scholarship, just how was it possible even for such a skeptical and widely-read churchman to tell what was canonical and what not? Googling was not an option.

If we look then at one thriving Christian nation around 1000 AD – roughly, the halfway point of the Christian story to date – then “Holy Scripture” was still a flexible concept. It definitely included, say, the Gospel of John, but alongside other books now largely forgotten that also carried authority. Regardless of what ancient councils had declared, the de facto canon of scripture was much wider than we think of today. Indeed, the English canon at that time had much in common with that of the present-day Ethiopian church, which also grants full recognition to Enoch and Jubilees.

The medieval English church then – regarded at the time as a paragon of Catholic orthodoxy and papal loyalty – was reading a package of scriptures very different from any modern Western concept of the Bible. This mattered so much because, far from being isolated at a distant corner of Christendom, the English church in its day was one of the world’s great missionary bodies, sending offshoots and church plants across Western Europe, into France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and beyond. And where those missionaries went, they took the Bibles they knew.

Related posts from Anxious Bench:

Oh that we could recover throughout Christianity the understanding of “canon” as “text as opposed to commentary.” Would you dismiss reports of an English Bishop as Nicea or other councils?

Philip Jenkins

There are certainly British (not English!) bishops at continental councils in the early fourth century. Definitely not at Nicea though, I fear. I wish!

Suburbanbanshee

Re: “text as opposed to commentary,” that’s not so much a difference in the concept of “canon” as a change in the word to mean something else, which is very common in Irish. Go to http://www.dil.ie and see. It was a useful name to call “a book on a religious topic that’s not a commentary,” because it wasn’t hard to pronounce in Irish and had a nice high sound to it. So calling the Book of Armagh “Patrick’s Canon” doesn’t imply anything about the Irish view of the Canon of Scripture; it just says that “canoine” sounded good and religious-y.

For example, the Latin-derived Irish word for “layman” gradually became “laoch,” the word for “warrior” (or at least, so I was taught when I was young). If that is true, does that mean that the Irish somehow thought all references to laymen in Latin texts were about warriors instead of laypeople? Of course not. (Particularly in Ireland, where not just everybody was of high enough caste to be called a warrior.)

Words change in the vernacular as the users please, but Latin technical terms have much more tendency to remain the same (mostly because technical terms are useful to keep universal).

http://glennshores.com Charles Fines

I hope there is a book in the works.

Philip Jenkins

The thought never crossed my mind

Rick

Interesting article.

“Regardless of what ancient councils had declared, the de facto canon of scripture was much wider than we think of today.”

Why did they not take into account what those councils had said (geography/distance, the councils makeup, etc…)?

Philip Jenkins

Partly, it was a matter of knowledge about exactly what had been decided. Also, people tended to grasp at what books were available, in an age when texts were scarce, and worry later about exactly what was approved. It was also by no means obvious exactly what a given work was – texts circulated under multiple names and identities. A “Gospel of Thomas” could refer to several quite distinct works: how could they know which was which?

Suburbanbanshee

As long as you’re mostly concerned with the story and the moral meaning of it, the reader’s usually not got a lot of worry about whether it’s factually true or critically edited or what have you. For example, do today’s preachers rigorously check out every single one of their factoids for use in sermons, and every religious or inspirational book they read, both for factual truth and for doctrinal adherence? Not usually, because it’s not all that important. As long as the gist they want to use is okay, they don’t worry about whether a pastor ever got struck by lightning on the golf course, or indeed, whether the events described are credible in any way beyond it being a useful joke.

In any case, word of mouth teaching and memorization was more important to Irish doctrinal transmission than even the holiest books, from the child at the breast to the professor at the monks’ great schools.